


Falling In A Bad Place Way

by flipflop_diva



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/M, Nightmares, Post-Someone Like Me as a Member, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 01:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8948950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: It was a dream. That's what Chidi kept telling himself. But why did some parts of that dream feel a little too real?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlecyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlecyclone/gifts).



> Written for Middlecyclone, who is on the same Chidi/Eleanor wavelength that I am. (Thank you for all your amazing prompts! I hope you like this.) Happy Yuletide!

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

The house looked the same. The clowns on the walls. The stoop up to the bedroom. The dishes in the sink that Fake Eleanor hadn’t put away (because Fake Eleanor never put away the dishes, even after he had told her she should start putting away the dishes and that they would sit there until she did because he was tired of doing it).

But everything else was wrong. All the furniture was black and were those spiders crawling all over the walls? The windows were open but he couldn’t see anything outside. It wasn’t dark. It was more like fog. Thick gray fog crowded up against the windows.

And it was hot. Sweltering heat. Sweat was literally dripping off his body on to a puddle on the floor.

He hated being hot. He always had. It had always been easier to think when everything was cool and calm.

It was not cool. It was not calm either. Outside, in the fog, there was screaming. A man or a woman, he wasn’t sure, but it was loud and long and only broke for maybe half a second before starting again.

He wanted to go help whoever this was, to get them to stop screaming, but he was stuck. He looked down. 

Oh no, no, no, no, no. This could not be happening.

Tar. He was standing on a pit of tar. The living room had turned into a pit of tar.

“Eleanor?” He called. He wasn’t sure which one he was yelling for. Did it matter right now? He was standing on tar. And melting. While spiders were surrounding him.

“Eleanor!”

A loud laugh cut through his yell. A familiar cackling laugh.

“They can’t help you here, loser.” Trevor. It was Trevor, and wait. Trevor was now standing in front of him, as smarmy as always. Hadn’t he gone back to the Bad Place? Chidi was sure he had gone back to the Bad Place. But …

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no ...

“Oh yes, yes, yes!” Trevor grinned. 

Wait, had he said that out loud?

“No,” Trevor said. “I can read your thoughts. Was that not in the orientation packet? No? Oh, right. We don’t have an orientation packet.”

Trevor laughed, that same smug laugh. Through his sweat-covered body, Chidi felt a chill.

“I’m in the Bad Place,” Chidi said. “This is my hell.”

He closed his eyes, hoping it would magically go away.

“Of course it is!” Trevor laughed again. He was still there. “You killed Janet! You lied about the trashbag! You covered up all the trashbag’s crimes! You fell for the trashbag! You don’t belong in the Good Place. You never belonged there. You belong here …. With me … For eternity!”

Trevor’s laugh rang in his ears.

Chidi opened his eyes.

He was in his bed. _His_ bed. With the white cotton sheets that were impressively wrinkle free no matter how many nights they had been slept on. And he was in his room. _His_ room. With walls that were spider-free. 

He turned his head. Eleanor — the real Eleanor — was asleep beside him. From somewhere beyond the bedroom, he could hear the sounds of dishes clanging. Just like they had been clanging for the past few mornings. Real Eleanor was an amazing cook, so Fake Eleanor had wanted to try.

“I’m not _jealous_ ,” she had insisted to Chidi when he’d asked her about it. “Just picking up a new skill. So I can make food. For others. Like good people do. Because I am a good person now.”

“Cooking doesn’t make you a good person,” Chidi had told her. “Especially when you wake us up every morning. That most definitely does not go with the good person thing.”

But Fake Eleanor had not been deterred. She still wasn’t, judging by the sound.

The sound of dishes. The sound of Fake Eleanor. Not the sound of Trevor.

He was in The Good Place. It had been a dream. A very disturbing dream. But a dream. He was okay. He was still here.

•••

“Is something bothering you?” Fake Eleanor asked him later. She was reading — a book he had given her, Chidi had noted almost proudly. They hadn’t had any more tutoring sessions since the real Eleanor had arrived. They were too busy. At least he was too busy. Discussing art and philosophy and taking walks around the community with the real Eleanor, with his real soulmate.

He felt guilty, though, about not spending as much time with Fake Eleanor as he used to. He should be spending time with her. He had promised to help her, and now that she needed to become a true good person in order to stay in the Good Place, he worried that he was somehow abandoning her in her time of need.

“Don’t worry about it!” she had admonished, a bit too cheerfully, when he had asked her about it. “You have a soulmate now! Go! Go be with her! Go spend time with her! Go!”

(He had gone. He had also heard a loud crash moments later, but the real Eleanor had tugged on his arm and smiled at him in that way she had that just made everything seem better, and besides, when they returned, hours later, nothing was damaged so it must not have been anything. Right?)

Now, though, Fake Eleanor was frowning at him and probing him with her eyes. He hated when she did that. He tried to look away, but it was like there was no escape. (Secretly, he worried that if he ever did end up in the Bad Place that this would be his hell. Forever being stared down by Fake Eleanor.)

“Come on,” she said. “I know something’s wrong. It’s so obvious. Just tell me.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said instantly.

She snorted. Actually snorted. “Right,” she said. “That’s why you look constipated.”

“I do not look constipated,” he said. “Do I? No, I definitely don’t.”

“Just teeeeelllll me,” Fake Eleanor said, dragging out the words as long as she could. Which was really long. It was almost amazing how long she could do that.

“It’s really nothing,” he said, and he tried to sound sincere.

“Oh,” she said. “I get it. Soulmate thing. You can’t tell me.”

“No,” he said instantly. “That’s not it. That’s definitely not it.”

“Sure it’s not,” she said. She jumped to her feet. “I need some frozen yogurt.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you aren’t getting any.”

•••

The real Eleanor didn’t notice anything was wrong. Or she did, he told himself that night as he took stock of his appearance in the bathroom mirror, and she knew he didn’t want to talk about it, so she didn’t bring it up, because unlike Fake Eleanor, the real Eleanor was in tune with his emotions and knew what he needed. 

So she did notice. She just knew enough not to ask.

What would he have said to her anyway if she had asked? I had a bad dream. I think I belong in the Bad Place. I killed Janet.

He couldn’t say any of that. So it was really a good thing she hadn’t asked. Or noticed.

But then again, was that even the real problem? Chidi wasn’t sure. He stared harder into the mirror, as if it could give him the answers.

He heard Trevor again, as though the man had come out of his dream and into the bathroom with him: “You killed Janet! You lied about the trashbag! You covered up all the trashbag’s crimes! You fell for the trashbag!”

_You fell for the trashbag._

Chidi lowered his head, stared down at his hands.

“Oh crap,” he said. “That’s a problem.”


End file.
